Communicate for Good

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:00:00:00

When you think about the role of communication, communication has always been in existence. Language hasn’t always been in existence, but communication has because we always have needed to connect because fundamental we’re tribal.

Rachel Myers 00:00:12:29

Hello, everyone. My name is Rachel Meyers. I’m guest hosting the Connected Philanthropy Podcast today. And as we come to a close of doing our work Smarter Not Harder Content series, we’re transitioning into a brand new, also very, very important topic around communication and specifically communicating for good. And we’re so fortunate that we have Erica Mills Barnhart with us today.

Rachel Myers 00:00:42:25

Welcome, Erica.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:00:43:23

Thank you. Great to be here.

Rachel Myers 00:00:45:09

Full disclosure regarding the relationship I have with Erica, we have known each other for at least ten years and have worked together. And I have taken, I think at least at least three, maybe up to five trainings from Erica. I have and I’m a bona fide Erica Barnhart fan and not ashamed to say it. Let me just be honest about that.

Rachel Myers 00:01:11:02

So I’m super excited to have this chance to talk with her and learn from her today. But since many of you who are listening don’t know. Erica, I’m going to start off with a question. Erica, how did you land in this role that you have today? What Tell us a little bit about your work life and how you came to be this expert in communication and in words?

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:01:35:03

I wish that I could say that it was like I had a grand master plan and it was very intentional and linear, but it wasn’t at all. Growing up, everyone assumed, including me, that I would be a lawyer. And then I was a paralegal. And then I decided I didn’t want to be a lawyer, but I have always had a deep appreciation for words and language.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:01:56:02

So I’m American, born in Canada to American parents. So you’ll you’ll hear that a little bit, listeners. And so we moved in between grades two and three. And I had gone to French Immersion in Canada so I could read and write only in French. And we spoke English at home, but I could only read and write French, which was going to be problematic, right, Because it’s going into graduate three.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:02:19:27

Bless my mum, she was an elementary school teacher and so over that summer she taught me how to read and I could read, I could read or write a little bit, but definitely not at a grade three level because it was all the French. And I have such like distinct emotional memories of understanding that I was different. And so I think it just gave me sort of this very deep, abiding appreciation for the importance of language, which just traveled, traveled with me.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:02:50:29

And, you know, it’s rare for that. So I have a master’s degree from the University of Washington, from the Evans School, where I’m now a teaching professor. And I remember this conversation, I had a group of besties, grad school besties. And we were getting to the end of our time and people were like, Well, you’re so lucky, Erica, because you know exactly what you’re going to do.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:03:09:05

And I was like, I do? I had no clue at this point. I actually my thesis was on microfinance and the dilemma of the double bottom line. And I had been just out of undergrad and before I moved back to Canada for a bit, I had on my own contract paralegal business Legal ease e-a-s-e, ha I still love that name.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:03:31:08

So I had to do marketing, but I just I remember sitting there looking at my friends being like, I don’t know what you’re taught. They’re like, Well, you’re going to do communications or marketing. That’s just what you do. And I’m like, Okay, So I was in-house for a social enterprise, so we didn’t put technology into the hands of nonprofits for about three years.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:03:50:00

And then I’ve been a consultant and a coach and a educator ever since. So 20 years. And I’m curious by nature. So, you know, I, I’m always trying to figure out new ways to apply language and look at words and all the rest of it. But it’s all in service to the work of nonprofits and foundations. You know, the philanthropic sector is so important.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:04:16:22

And oftentimes, like I have done primary research on the language that that is used and it’s not helping a lot of time, Right. Like it actually creates friction. And that’s a that’s a huge bummer, partially because it is it’s a fixable problem. Right. To us to a certain extent. It’s actually a polarity. We can talk about that, but it’s a polarity that you have to manage.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:04:41:15

But so much can be, you know, you can upgrade your communication really significantly with small tweaks. So I really you know, I’m very granular, like when I work with clients, we are looking at one word halfway, which I was just prepping for a workshop I’m giving tomorrow for a client. We’re going to look at adjectives, we’re going to look at verbs, we’re going to look at nouns separately, and then we bring them together into sentences and it gets very exciting.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:05:05:29

It’s not linear, right, in that you can change one input and have such a distinctive, profound change happen. And, you know, these days I’m doing a lot of coaching with managers and leaders, mainly leadership team folks and teams, and that work is like downright addictive because, you know, for 20 years I focused primarily on external messaging mission, vision, values, purpose.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:05:32:12

And that’s still that’s still very, very important. But it takes longer. You know, there’s there’s a longer gestation period for that to fruition. You know, I can work with a team. I just did a training yesterday for a team and one last week, and they were under an hour and they were like, oh my gosh, like a boom, like a light bulb.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:05:53:24

Because if you understand your communication style and you understand that of your team, you understand why, like if you’re people oriented, like someone here might be Rachel.

Rachel Myers 00:06:06:09

And Rachel Myers.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:06:07:10

You know, like you have to kind of know how someone is doing. How is there being before you can dive in to the meat of things? Well, meanwhile, you’re action oriented. People are like, Oh my God, we’re wasting time again talking about the weekend or whatever. But that’s because action oriented people are all about getting across the finish line.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:06:30:10

So it’s just these it’s just fun. It’s fun to have people have these moments of like, oh, I get I understand me better. Not the totality of who you are, obviously, but I understand this thing, this aspect of me, and I understand this about these people that I work with who I adore really are bugging me, right? Like, why do you do these things?

Rachel Myers 00:06:51:00

And once you have clarity, you can actually hear and understand and and receive, I’m guessing, receive their messages in such a different way than before, where you’re like, if you’re that extra in person, I don’t want to hear about your cat again. Okay. I when I talk about what we’re going to get done today, I really that’s so fascinating.

Rachel Myers 00:07:11:08

I’m curious, like, as you’ve been working with the different groups you’ve mentioned, you’ve had a couple of trainings recently. What sort of I don’t know, like obstacles or challenges or like what comes up frequently do you find in in sort of helping groups find better ways to communicate internally.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:07:31:20

That are is such a tough word, if it’s so judgy? Right. I like to think of it as like, how can you communicate more successfully? Like in a way that makes people feel good? You know, I just I just did a podcast about the difference between effective and successful and sort of the etymology of those words and actually effective has to do with the process so you can be effective and actually not just this is the history of the word, we don’t use it in this way, but I thought it was really interesting to think about.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:07:59:14

It was all about process. So it was kind of like it was effective because we didn’t then we done did the thing and we’re done with the thing. But it’s not about results. Her success has always been about the results. So I’ll just paraphrase a little bit, which is, you know, how can you communicate more successfully? And the barriers actually, you know, the reason that I really felt called to do much more work on internal communications is because I kept getting asked like, our team is coming back.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:08:29:09

We’re in this, you know, for a period of time, you know, like, how do I communicate in these little zoom rooms? That was confusing. I think now is more confusing. Hybrid is very challenging from a communication perspective because you it requires more fluency, right? A different settings. So that’s like my team. You know, I was getting these questions like, Erika, how do I help?

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:08:51:28

My team are struggling. I’m struggling. I don’t know what’s I don’t know what’s wrong. It used to used to kind of work. Now it doesn’t work. And I would say that’s the theme. It’s like these things that we used to do before COVID just aren’t working. How can we be more successful? And for a place I just really want to say of like deep concern and also, you know, in the sector, we’re just seen massive burnout, right?

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:09:16:20

So if you layer these things on, like I put out an e-book in the past year or something. Yeah, last year maybe about it was called recharge. Right. And it was about how do you do that one word at a time? And that that was my initial like nod to I do have I do know a thing or two about how we might address this.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:09:38:26

And so I wanted to share that, but also an external communication, like I’m hearing this from, you know, it’s like this used to work and we’re just not getting the traction or the results that we used to. So what do we do about that? It’s always a balance. This is the polarity I was talking about. There’s internal communication, there’s external communication, and you with any polarity, it’s like you, you, you can overdo one.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:10:04:13

So if you’re too focused on external communication and I feel like this is what happened and what has contributed to a certain extent to quiet quitting and burnout and all these other things that are breaking my heart. We were so focused on external communication that the internal communication didn’t get the attentiveness. It is a bummer, right? So I kind of had to get to crisis mode, not across the board.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:10:28:16

I’m generalizing from broad structure here, but we it is. It feels that way. It’s like it had to get so bad. And so what does that say about how we value the people that are working for our organizations?

Rachel Myers 00:10:40:12

Right? Absolutely. And the other thing that this makes me think of is I keep trying to sort of ground myself and remind myself, like the way in which we’re working now is completely different than how we worked for like a century before, like working remotely. I mean, you actually have worked remotely, you personally for a while and actually found it as was set up to work remotely.

Rachel Myers 00:11:03:10

But most organizations like across, you know, generally speaking, we haven’t worked in a hybrid, remote type way before and we are in the like early learning stages of trying to sort it out. We’re taking we’re experimenting really in many ways.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:11:20:19

So there’s this bridges as a scholar and he he does work around organizational change and transformation and he has this he has a couple of key insights. But most people, if they’ve heard of his work, they’ve heard of what he refers to as the neutral zone. Okay. So what he points out, which is genius, is that, you know, it’s one that an organization will be like, we’ve made a decision regarding change.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:11:48:05

Okay. The beginning of your transformation process is actually an ending.

Rachel Myers 00:11:54:02

Oh, yeah, right. Of course. Because something’s ending.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:11:58:19

Something is ending. So by the way, you have to grieve that. That’s my that’s my little addition to it. We don’t grieve in Western culture. Well, we like to just avoid it, Right? There are ways to grieve and honor what your what you’re leaving behind. But it starts with an ending. And then you go and productivity will be high because you’re you suck it and then you dip because people are like, where?

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:12:28:17

What are we doing? What’s the what? What? Right? And they been told the vision and where we’re going. Hopefully not always, but hopefully. But then you’re not there yet. And it’s uncharted territory. And with the need for high psychological safety, especially for people of color, people from marginalized communities like we just we absolutely must be committed to a higher attentiveness to psychological safety.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:12:56:21

So when you’re in this, like in productivity is tanked and, you know, everybody’s like, oh, I don’t know what’s coming. I’m not doing great, you know? And then eventually, as more as more things become clear, as you co-create, you come back out. And that’s the beginning. That’s the third phase. But we and by the way, the neutral zone is the longest phase.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:13:19:23

We’re in it. We’re in the neutral zone when it comes to hybrid. And and so that’s just that’s a that has some really interesting repercussion points on a lot of levels, including for how you communicate.

Rachel Myers 00:13:31:09

Agreed and I you know I was just in a meeting this morning with a client and we were talking about their event, you know, for the year she was sort of sharing like like internal events, like, here’s how we celebrate this. And this is what, you know, the different events. And as she was sharing them out, then she started saying, well, then of course, there’s a remote workers and then there’s our hybrid workers, and then they have an office across on the other side of state.

Rachel Myers 00:13:54:03

And then pretty soon it becomes it becomes a completely different strategy the way we used to do something. Well, it was successful in the way we worked before, and it made sense and everyone loved it. It isn’t going to be successful now because we don’t work in the same way that we used to work. And I just sort of I mean, I know that sounds so obvious, but it’s still I think we’re so still so new into the hybrid way of working that we’re we’re like relearning that lesson in many, many different ways.

Rachel Myers 00:14:27:17

Either painfully, probably both painfully and intentionally. Okay, yeah. Let’s not forget we have our people who are remote and how do we include them? How do we build connection?

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:14:39:05

Well, this is that this is the thing that I wanted to point out. So I’m glad you mentioned it, which is like just listen to the language. Remote workers, in-person workers. You know, there’s so much othering that is happening just in how we’re referring to each other and in place and locality and who’s where. And if you’re not attentive to that, it can really make people who might already feel I mean, this is the thing with hybrid, right?

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:15:06:17

Like to have that there is going to be dynamics with that. So you may people who are psyched that they they get to work remotely and they’re not feeling like they’re a part of it in the same way. So, you know, from a communication perspective, I kind of think it’s really worth a conversation about how are we going to refer to each other.

Rachel Myers 00:15:29:11

I love that. That’s so. But like, this is a conversation we haven’t had to have before, right? This is new way of thinking, working and being intentional about communication and interaction.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:15:43:16

Yeah, I mean, it is always, you know, there’s there’s always been a thing around headquarters, right? So we did actually have a we have a predecessor to this to a certain extent. So if you had headquarters, headquarters was headquarters and that’s where the power, right. So this is about power dynamics. And then you were like are the satellite offices you want to run a satellite office again just that term?

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:16:10:22

So I think that that’s really a conversation was having. I mean, when you think about the role of communication, communication has always been in existence. Language hasn’t always been in existence, but communication has because we always have needed to connect because fundamentally we’re tribal. So it’s just it’s still about connection. But again, like creating the space to have these conversations even and even to have the bandwidth to realize, like these little things are like, how do you remote workers hybrid versus like just as a leader, you know, because I think the studies need to be, you know, from people who will position authority like to say, how did just who do we want to be

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:16:52:20

together? There’s the how, but like, who do we want to be? Yeah. And that that has such implications for the culture that you’re creating.

Rachel Myers 00:16:59:28

Absolutely. And how do we want to be together?

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:17:02:16

Yeah. Yeah. But I feel like that the Who has to come before the how. I always think I guess we’ll talk about the Claxon method. Anybody who knows me is like, oh of course you know. Right. Like, but this is I mean, we’ll talk about the Claxon method. It’s a lot. What? I work the method.

Rachel Myers 00:17:19:13

Right? Well, tell us about the Claxon method. Let’s segway right into it. Come on. You’re here. It is.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:17:25:22

I mean, part of the solution to these really deep, quite emotional communication challenges. And that’s one thing I just really want a name for, for us and for listeners is this this nature of problem is much more emotional, figuring out what’s going to, you know, content strategy. You know, it’s not high on the feels really this this internal communication is all about the feels right and so this is like leaders are having to make themselves uncomfortable, be open and willing to be uncomfortable.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:18:03:25

So so that’s a whole thing. But the way that you address, whether or not it’s internal communication or external communication is by having a model and a method. So the model that I use called communicate for good, and then the method is the claxon method. What that means, if you’re communicating for good, it means for the good of yourself, for the team, for the organization and the world.

Rachel Myers 00:18:26:20

Nice yourself, the team, the organization and the world. Love it.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:18:32:17

Now, if you do the first three, the fourth, the world kind of takes care of itself to a large extent. And and again, I was saying there’s interaction like we’d be over over invested in figuring out external communication. And not to say that you go by the wayside. I have I have a lot to say about like open AI and what that might be able to unlock for nonprofits in terms of content.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:18:56:21

That’s actually riveting. I think there’s a lot of potential. I’m not saying you don’t pay attention to that because we you know, we all bring it back into balance, not like leave external communications by the wayside. But I feel like the organization has gotten a fair amount teams, a sort of because we’ve always kind of known that teams and we know that leaders need to be legally and they kind of need to know how to shoot.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:19:18:03

But you know what we don’t do for them, given the support and training they need and deserve to do it. Well, I do. If you promote someone, they by definition, like everything that they say is now louder, Right?

Rachel Myers 00:19:32:24

Oh, that’s such a good way of describing it. I’ve never heard it described quite that simply. But 1,000%, once you become a leader, everything you say is louder. You good one. Yeah.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:19:48:11

And so given the support and training they need now, of course I could. If I were a listener, I’d be like, Oh, that’s nice. Yeah. So they hire you, Erica Yeah, I’m real good at this, but. But for me, it comes from places like that’s just respectful, you know? It’s about respects and, and study and setting folks up for success because that is a different it’s a bit of a different mindset.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:20:13:01

There’s a skill set piece for there’s a mindset piece here right? So this is so that’s kind of the model, right? And the other thing for leaders and I have a whole I have a podcast episode, I have a podcast cleverly called Communicate for Good, and it was about the secret life of self-talk.

Rachel Myers 00:20:30:12

Oh, I love this. Yes.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:20:32:16

Yeah. So this I do a lot of work with my coaching clients, my leaders around this. Like what? What is going on in your mind? Like, I get that we think that it won’t make its way out, doesn’t actually work like that. So we have to, you know, you have to clean up those, the thought patterns, the limiting beliefs, all of that.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:20:55:17

And again, because the internal communication work is a place of discomfort for many, for many leaders, like really getting doing that inner game work is so important. So that’s the model. So good for yourself, the team, the organization, the world. Then you pair that with the Claxon method. So I develop the Claxon method. 20 years ago it was pretty early on, so and I developed it because I realized I was getting asked by clients questions that were all about the how should we be on Twitter?

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:21:27:21

Should be on TikTok. What about I don’t know, should we get rid of the print newsletter? Like legit questions? But but you can’t have a strategic answer to that unless you know what success looks like and who you’re trying to reach. So the Clarkson method is, you know, starts with what does success look like? And you can it’s what, who, how, what, who how grounded in the why listeners you decide what feels right to you in terms of the phrasing but what does success look like or what outcomes do you want and need to achieve?

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:21:57:12

I always start with the what? Who? Who are you in conversation with? Who’s your target audience? Right? And really like understanding them, taking the time to for because guess what? They’re different than you. Probably you may have similarities and so what what did they need? How do they think getting into their hearts and minds and then the how becomes much more clear.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:22:19:24

Right. So so if you think about that, let’s do external, an external example first, then internal to work with, with external marketing or communications or whichever you prefer if you think about success? So there’s a lot of nonprofits listening to let’s go right to fundraising, shall we? So maybe what success looks like is that you’re going to increase donations from individuals by 20%.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:22:43:28

Okay, Now all have we could jump right to the how, but if you don’t we don’t know if those are is that donor acquisition or is that retention? They’re at a completely different place on what I refer to as the engagement cycle. Right. So you got to get clear on that. And then and then and then and also this is where I’m now referring to.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:23:01:03

This is the what, who, what dosido this type of fun.

Rachel Myers 00:23:05:09

That’s so fun let’s do it. Yeah. Whenever you can throw in dosidoe you gotta do it.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:23:09:11

I don’t actually know what a dosido is so this could be like way off base probably dancers out there if there’s But it’s fun to say I’ll tell you that.

Rachel Myers 00:23:18:06

I don’t know either but I have I have a mental picture but.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:23:21:11

No idea why yeah.

Rachel Myers 00:23:23:20

I think of square dancing. Right. It’s some kind of Anyway, who knows? We’ll find out. We’ll put it in the show.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:23:29:04

What I mean by that? Yeah, exactly. Well, or it’s Logan. It could be a recent map for us. Tell us if it’s accurate. Thank you. Is Then you want to go back to the what? Right. So what does success look like? Who’s the target audience then? Two things in the what? What’s their communication style? So for listeners Foundant is very graciously is going to host a webinar that I’m going to lead on April 19th.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:23:52:08

And so participants at that on that webinar, you’re going to take the peer case communication, self assessment. Don’t worry, there’s a link was very long to figure out what your there’s four communication styles or orientations, so we’re going to play go pretty deep on that So and you can get you know you’re not going to be like hey donor, can you just take this off as worries?

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:24:14:07

That would be amazing.

Rachel Myers 00:24:17:08

It only take you like 10 minutes and then just email me the results. Is that cool? Great.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:24:22:02

But it’s interesting, right, because fundraisers do tend to tends to attract a lot of people oriented people. And so you can make an assumption that you’re talking to someone else. So the four orientations are action people, ideas and process.

Rachel Myers 00:24:37:16

Mm hmm. I am people. Just to confirm the earlier statement.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:24:42:19

Yes. Yes. Yeah. Mm hmm. People oriented. And again, I’m not going to go into all that because we’ll go into it on the webinar, but this has really profound implications. And then the classic what’s like, what do they care about? What’s on their hearts, what’s going on in their minds, You know, just like get in there. So that and what that does is mitigates projection because otherwise you will do everything just the way you would like it dished up for you.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:25:04:24

And there may be some really substantive differences and then you get to the how. Right? So if it so let’s say it’s going to be new donor acquisition. Okay. And you would do a little more digging on that. Well, those you know, the the how you would reach new donors is quite different than if they’re already in your database.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:25:23:01

Right. So the ripple effect of that often jumped over what who what do what do you do? It leads to a lot of decision making that is fine, but not really geared toward that, as strategic as we might like. And there’s an opportunity cost of that in terms of higher costs, money out the door and your time, that’s that.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:25:49:12

Like an external example with an internal example. Again, you start with what, like maybe you’re a leader and you’re having a one on one with one of your direct reports. Who are they? Right? Like, what does success look like? What it what’s the purpose of the meeting? Getting very clear on that. And then for they so for instance, if you’re a people oriented person you might might be lighter on process.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:26:13:04

Okay. So both people and process people tend to a lot of words come out of their mouths less so for action oriented right. So there’s a lot of words but the type of words are very different. So people oriented are like, okay, your cat, like has you’re you know, they’re checking in on you, the human being, your process oriented people like they want to lay out what’s happening step by step by step, very different words.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:26:41:02

And so that’s just two quick examples of how you can. And then going back to the model, right. Was that good for me? Because you you can be authentic. This comes up a lot like you will be like. But that sounds like I have to communicate in a way that doesn’t feel natural or authentic to me. Not so.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:26:58:13

The more self-aware you are about how you communicate, the more you can calibrate while staying centered and grounded in who you are.

Rachel Myers 00:27:05:27

You know what this reminds me of? I this reminds me of a key learning I had. Oh, golly, maybe 15 or 16 years ago when I was leading the Whatcom Literacy Council and I was doing these monthly orientations for new volunteers. I started doing them every month at the library, and after the first couple, I had some genius brave woman come up to me afterwards and she’s like, I loved hearing about the the Literacy Council.

Rachel Myers 00:27:36:14

Your presentation was, you know, super inspiring, but I really wish you’d had some visuals. I really appreciate seeing things in a visual format. And, you know, in the back of my mind, I’m like, Well, of course I should have. But because I in the Talker, I like to, you know, I love to listen and learn that way. That’s kind of my main way out.

Rachel Myers 00:27:57:27

Of course, I like visuals too, but I was teaching or sharing in the way I preferred to receive information and I had to step up my game and add visuals, add and I’ve learned even more as a facilitated more and more and become a stronger facilitator in the same way that I, you know, adjusted in my presentation for her, for her from her feedback.

Rachel Myers 00:28:21:27

I also have adjusted how I facilitate to not require as much large group dynamics because while that’s very comfy for me, I enjoy that it’s not as comfy for some of the other people and you’re not going to get It’s getting back to what does success look like. You’re not going to get the participation and input from the whole group because some people just don’t want to speak in front of ten other people.

Rachel Myers 00:28:44:09

That’s not comfortable for them. That’s not where you’re going to hear their ideas, writing down their ideas and sharing it with one other person. Great, You know, So it just gives me insight.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:28:55:15

That this is this is why I start. Like, if it’s a group of people, I don’t know. I start by asking how many people are people? How many people are dog people, and how many people very uncomfortable having to pick between dogs and cats. It’s it’s actually fascinating how helpful this is in what I’m what I’m gauging is introversion to extroversion and an ambiversion.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:29:15:15

It is it is so accurate that people tend to be much more introverted. And again, like not everyone who have broad brush strokes they can and then I calibrate accordingly.

Rachel Myers 00:29:27:28

Yeah, I love that. But it kind of reminds me sort of wrapping around your point of it’s not being inauthentic. It’s it’s actually just adjusting for the group that you have so that people have a better experience so that, you know, whatever your success looks like, I want to get back to that question. What does success look like?

Rachel Myers 00:29:48:12

Eric and I had a very brief conversation earlier today and where I personally had an epiphany. I’ve been using that question What does success look like when I set up events, when, you know, as I prepare for events, as I set up meetings, as I I’m kind of starting to realize that question is maybe the root of every successful preparation for anything we do.

Rachel Myers 00:30:11:13

What does success look like if you’re not clear about that? And interestingly, sometimes when you go to write it down, in actual words, getting back to you, it’s harder than you think. You think you kind of know, Oh, I know why, what’s what success looks like, what the purpose of this is. Maybe you don’t when you actually try to write it, it for me, it creates a lot more clarity.

Rachel Myers 00:30:33:11

We talked about this in a previous podcast about meetings. I encourage everyone for every meeting to have a purpose statement for them at the top of the agenda.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:30:42:06

Why are we meeting? Meaning it’s not always easy. I have another podcast episode that’s called What type of Meeting is this anyway? I mean, it’s a simple concept, right? But and this maps back to communication styles, by the way. But like, are we meeting for connection? That’s fine. Are we meeting to generate ideas. Great. You know, are we meeting because we’re coming up with an action plan?

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:31:05:24

These are very different meetings and I think back to sort of psychological safety and burnout and stress when we’re under stress our central nervous systems cannot be as helpful as we might want them to be in terms of like our ability to, of course, correct and adjust to what we’re going to go to to our default settings and so having that like whatever meanness is any way in advance is really helpful in terms of like, okay, I know that I’m going to go into a meeting as an action oriented person with my ideas and executive director.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:31:42:03

This is very classic. So people and CEOs and these tend to be heavy on ideation. And so they’re up there with their great big ideas, right? They’re just, they’re ideating your action. Person is like, are are doing thing that feels like a pretty big decision how are we going to do two and like, how quickly do we live, Right?

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:32:03:09

So just even saying all we’re doing is brainstorming, we’re not taking decisions really calls the system down?

Rachel Myers 00:32:11:13

Absolutely 1,000%. Okay. I’m going to say a little bit because I don’t want us to run out of time before I ask you about this. I took a little quiz on your website recently called the Communicate for Good Quiz, so I would love you to share a little bit about that quiz and what it’s all about.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:32:31:29

I mean, it’s sort of the now that listeners have heard how obsessed I am with the question, what does success look like? That’s the goal setting piece and what I was noticing. So I pulled that out as a section because sometimes, like sometimes the goals are there, but they’re not communicated. So it was a way to parse those things, right?

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:32:59:10

And like so sort of middle managers would be like, I don’t do we have the goals? Well, it’s like, well, we have the goals, or maybe we don’t have the goals. So it’s a way to like pull those apart because it’s and they’re all I mean, obviously they’re all related, but as a leader, like if you found out that maybe you weren’t setting goals or you had some growth in that area, then you get to wonder what the effect is on your team.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:33:30:03

And then if you’re the one, you maybe not be somebody who makes the goals, but you need to know what they are. So how well are you on the receiving end of that? And then the leadership questions tend to be around personal leadership, integrity, values, purpose, integrity, those types like are you clear on what type of person you are and therefore what type of leader you are?

Rachel Myers 00:33:50:19

I think one of the questions that I said no to that that pointed me in the direction that I could dig in on in my leadership a little bit more was the question I believe was do you have a personal purpose statement? Is that it’s that that’s something like that. And I remember as I answered no, I was like, I don’t not yet.

Rachel Myers 00:34:08:29

I wish there was a not yet. Because I was like, Oh, that’s such a good idea. I love the idea of having a personal purpose statement, but I do not have one currently.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:34:15:24

So so I use so my colleague Dr. Bhatia has a book called Purpose Mindset, which is great book, by the way. So her was the head of philanthropy for for a number of years. He was the executive director of a sort of tech for good at nonprofit. Prior to that, he’s an architect by training. He is that dude’s an onion I always like.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:34:37:29

I didn’t know that we’ve known each other. How do you know that? You know, like really different things. So he wrote this book, The Purpose of Mindset. And really the book is about how Microsoft prioritized charitable giving and made that part of the culture. And then he was like, he got curious about how to what were the elements that made that possible and make that happen.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:34:57:16

So he does he does a lot of work around personal purpose statements, and then he and I collaborate with clients on client work sometimes. And so I integrated this idea of starting, of course, with your herb, because I always take a verb first or verb forward approach to any messaging. So we kind of evolved it in, in that way.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:35:19:10

But that that’s the purpose. Purpose statements are powerful and you can do them quickly. Like I’ve, I integrate this into, into my work with leaders. Not every one can some people feel clear, but others really are. And so and I’ve done it with teams and full organizations and with full organization. You just need a little more time. But you’ve done it in like 7 minutes or less, and it may not be your ultimate, you know, you might tweak it after it, you know, let it marinate a little bit.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:35:54:09

But it’s surprising how much clarity people get so quickly with that.

Rachel Myers 00:36:00:03

I bet. I just I hadn’t I mean, I do like, you know you talked about this. I do like a words, a word of the year or a couple of words that are are my intentions for the year. But that’s different than a purpose, than a personal purpose statement. So I meant check out that book and give that some more thought.

Rachel Myers 00:36:15:27

So thank you for that.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:36:17:02

And he he has refined how he does it if you go I don’t know can’t remember which URL maybe it’s purpose dot mindset dot org thought I think I feel like it is but maybe be fact checked. You can go and learn the way that he invites you to do it because he invites you to identify three strengths, three values.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:36:36:17

And then out of that you write a purpose statement.

Rachel Myers 00:36:39:18

Oh, I love this. Okay, I just wanted to make sure that I yeah, brought up that. I just thought that the Communicate for Good quiz was such an interesting, you know, cool tool. So thanks for sharing that. It’s on it’s on Erica’s website and your website Erica is.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:36:56:14

Claxon-communication.com

Rachel Myers 00:36:58:25

Got it. Okay. I think because I know we could keep going for like three more hours, but I don’t think that’s exactly right.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:37:06:26

Really want to listen for three more hours? Probably not and sign up for the webinar. It’s actually I mean, I’m doing the webinar April 19th and then Foundant is hosting with me. So there’s other opportunities to talk more about this and to dig in more deeply.

Rachel Myers 00:37:22:17

So fantastic. Okay, so definitely sign up for the webinar on the 19th and you’re going to talk about the claxon method. I’m sure going to talk about many of the other things we touched on today.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:37:34:23

We’re going to do a pretty deep dive on on this interpersonal communication piece, but always framed with the model and the method model.

Rachel Myers 00:37:43:04

And the method.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:37:44:09

Love method, there’s some interactivity. It’s going to be fun.

Rachel Myers 00:37:48:00

Oh, it sounds so fun. Plan to be there personally. So I don’t like to miss out on anything that Erica offers, honestly. So thank you so much, Erica, for sharing all of this great information, all of your insights and your original way of looking at communication is just so useful. And and for me, super like mind opening. And I really appreciate that aspect of how you teach.

Erica Mills Barnhart 00:38:21:07

I appreciate it.

Rachel Myers 00:38:22:19

Thank you so much. Thank you to everyone who’s listening as well. And you can get all the links at the bottom of the page and I hope you join Erica and myself on the 19th and April 19th for the webinar, Communicate for Good. Thank you so much.